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About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mai... (More)

About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mainly in the Bay Area with different companies. My former wife went back to medical school after we had been married a few years, and we moved into married student housing at Stanford, had our two now adult children while she was a medical student, and moved into Palo Alto when she started her Residency. Been here ever since. As my kids were going through the Palo Alto schools, I was actively involved in their activities, most notably head umpire for Palo Alto Little League and 9 years as a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, among other activities. My kids both are grown, my son teaches 5th grade locally, and my daughter, fluent in Mandarin, is working in China. I sold the business I owned and ran for 8 years in 2012, worked on the Obama campaign, and am consulting for non-profit organizations, which gives me a nice, flexible schedule. Lots of stamps in my passport, and for fun, I like live performances &emdash; theater and music - and of course the Giants! (Hide)

Sequester

I lean strongly to the notion of the closer and more local the government is able to meet the needs of local residents and voters, the better.

More Jeffersonian than Hamiltonian. Read the Federalist Papers.

Don't depend on the county, the state, or the DC folks to be the heroes. The further up the government food chain they are, the more they get into uncompromising ideology and dysfunction.

Palo Alto happens to be a complicated small city. Other such places include Cambridge, Boulder, Evanston, New Haven, Princeton: see a trend? Places with major universities joined at the hip with the city they adjoin.

I cite these cities as examples of how dysfunctional and polemically divided people are with town and gown.

The good news is that many, maybe most, cities and towns of our size do not face or have to deal with such complexities as we do in Palo Alto.

The bad news is that things in these parts take much more time and effort to get reviewed, approved, and completed than may take place in vicinities with less complexity.

The worse news is that our counties, our state, and our country are, to use a sailing phrase, in irons.

I personally had a legitimate gripe with the State of California, and had a face to face with the Assemblyman, it got nowhere. Similarly, I had a dispute with the IRS, ultimately settled to my favor, and the Congresswoman's staff were of no help getting the matter resolved. Go figure on constituent support. Government inaction (not in action.)

I am at the point where I don't care if it is President Obama, whom I admire (with misgivings,) or GOP Senate Leader McConnell of Kentucky (whose earthly mumbles must appeal to 'nuff folks to keep him re-elected.) And by the way, there is a country singer who is considering a senate race against Mitch.

I have displayed some of my political biases in this blog. The main point here is to push as much as possible to the local level. While I understand and value much of what the governments do at broader levels, and recognize that most cities, townships, et al are not the likes of Palo Alto or Evanston or Princeton…

Push it down! This sequestration thing going on right now in DC is a perfect example of why we need to adhere to the roots from which our country are based.

These tours, most recently guided by volunteers though monitored by paid Secret Service staff, have been an American tradition since John and Abigail Adams, the first White House residents, personally hosted receptions for the public.

And their cancellation is an austerity measure that saves a pittance, while more frivolous taxpayer funding for items like the White House dog walker continues.

Meanwhile, noble Americans can buy time with the president for a suggested donation of $500,000 to his new campaign group, Organising for Action.
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And then .. there was the release of over 2,000 illegal immigrants .. supposedly because of sequestered funds:

The top U.S. immigration enforcement official acknowledged Thursday that the Obama administration has in fact released thousands of illegal immigrants from local jails over the last month despite prior claims that the release was only in the hundreds.
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Or maybe Paul Losch was enthralled with the President's public relations push back against the attacks on the Benzhazi consulate, by going on David Letterman and blaming the attacks on a short trailer found on Youtube that was not very complementary to the so-called Prophet Muhammad.

So .. Mr. Losch .. has the sequester endangered your quality of life yet?

"Apparently, Obama wants a painful crisis to push Republicans into accepting even higher taxes or losing at the polls in 2014."

"The president is motivated by political gain to manufacture for taxpayer pain. The real spending choices imposed by sequestration and the fact that the president wrote the law that requires it is poorly understood by most voters, and he is exploiting the Bully Pulpit to wrongly blame House Republicans for what will surely follow."

"Americans will suffer needlessly when the cuts come, but Obama, seeing partisan advantage, is putting politics above public welfare."

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